I’m always a little surprised when people are horrified to hear I don’t punish my children. “How will they learn right from wrong?” is usually the first question, and I can see them picturing a household run by unruly hellions jumping on furniture and swinging from the ceiling fans. It’s not that we don’t have those moments (maybe not quite that extreme) — but as much as I want punishment-free to mean always calm, always peaceful, and rules always followed, that isn’t the truth either.
Tag: control
Be More Antifragile
One of the major points of the book is that by designing all the danger out of things, trying to make the randomness and volatility go away and keep things smooth and “safe”, you make the danger worse. It’s inevitable and natural. Completely unavoidable. Just like how anti-gun “laws” actually increase the risks they claim to want to solve. The people who embrace these ideas may have good intentions, but they are idiots.
Con Trolling
Here’s how it works: a troll preys on your need to be affirmed. Nearly everything that a troll does is to signal a message to you that says “I don’t like you and I’m not going to grant you the gift of my approval.” Once you start using arguments as a means of begging the troll to become your ally, the troll wins. Now he/she can simply play the easy and endless game of using everything you say as a basis for offering responses that make you feel more desperate for their acceptance and more frustrated for not receiving it.
Attitudes Toward Power: Boromir vs. Gandalf
“With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly… Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.”
The Relational Anarchist Primer
According to relational anarchists, the better humans connect with each other, the more peace and understanding that will exist between them. The greater the strength of the relationships, the less likely rulers will become necessary or begin to emerge. Anarchism means “without rulers.” And besides being a political assertion, this is a psychological and relational preference. It is apolitical, based on preferred relationship standards. Instead of dispensing violence, these anarchists dispense compassion.
The Drug Named “Control”
Drugs laws in general are predicated on the assumption that though drug consumption is an individual behavior, the effects of that consumption, especially in the aggregate, are a net negative to society. Laws punishing the production, distribution, and use of drugs are therefore an attempt to prevent individuals from causing harm to society as a whole. In pursuing such policies, the government which seeks to discourage drug use in fact encourages the abuse of and addiction to the one drug it loves and will never outlaw: control.
Freedom Cells – Networks For A Free Society
Similar to a mutual aid or benefit society, a Freedom Cell is a network of individuals who share a common understanding of the requirements to bring about a free society. The purpose is to work together and bring those requirements into reality in their own lives and the communities in which they live.
Scribbles and Bullshit Rituals
Once upon a time, a group of people, without my cooperation or approval–and in fact, well before I was even born–proclaimed that they were going to forcibly rob and control anyone existing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. To claim that me existing on the continent therefore constitutes me “consenting” to be extorted and dominated is just plain stupid. Apparently all any street gang or Mafia has to do is say, “Hey, this place is our turf now!” and by the statist reasoning, anyone who still decides to stay in that area would be “agreeing” to do whatever the gang says.
The Magic Trick of Authority
If you approach a magic trick from the assumption that there is no magic, then your perspective of the trick changes and more often than not the deception becomes readily obvious. Rather than being a mystical art of unknown power, it becomes a puzzle to be solved, and you begin to see the misleading movements and the subtle slight of hand that compose the trick, rather than only the finishing prestige designed to leave you in wonder. The same applies to the idea of the state.
Gender Identity is a Hall of Mirrors
I’ve said some things on transgender issues that if people were paying close attention might seem like I am playing both sides of the fence. I hold 3 main strident positions on the matter.